ice and reduce the system. He was so much pleased with the
success of these efforts, that he began to feel a great desire to
perform in public upon the stage. He accordingly began to make
arrangements for doing this. He first appeared in private
exhibitions, in the imperial palaces and gardens, where only the
nobility of Rome and invited guests were present. He, however,
gradually extended his audiences, and at length came out upon the
public stage,--first, however, in order to prepare the public mind
for what they would have otherwise considered a great degradation,
inducing the sons of some of the principal nobility to come forward
in similar entertainments. He was so pleased with the success which
he imagined that he met with in this career that he devoted a large
part of his time during his whole life to such performances. Of
course, his love of applause in his theatrical career, increased
much too fast to be satisfied with the natural and ordinary means of
gratifying it, and he accordingly made arrangements, most absurdly,
to create for his performances a fictitious and counterfeit
celebrity. At one time he had a corps of five thousand men under pay
to applaud him, in the immense circuses and amphitheaters where he
performed. These men were regularly trained to the work of
applauding, as if it were an art to be acquired by study and
instruction. It _was_ an art, in fact, as they practiced
it,--different modes of applause being designated for different
species of merit, and the utmost precision being required on the
part of the performers, in the concert of their action, and in their
obedience to the signals. He used also to require on the days when
he was to perform, that the doors of the theater should be closed
when the audience had assembled, and no egress allowed on any
pretext whatever. Such regulations of course excited great
complaint, and much ridicule; especially as the sessions at these
spectacles were sometimes protracted and tiresome to the last
degree. Even sudden sickness was not a sufficient reason for
allowing a spectator to depart, and so it was said that the people
used sometimes to feign death, in order to be carried out to their
burial. In some cases, it was said, births took place in the
theaters, the mothers having come incautiously with the crowd to
witness the spectacles, without properly considering what might be
the effect of the excitement, and then afterward not being permitted
to retir